Visiting grad student at Brown charged with murder

PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) — A visiting graduate student at Brown University has been charged with murder and was being held on $10 million bond after he allegedly traveled across the country and stabbed his girlfriend to death.

Mark Nickel, a spokesman for Brown, says on Monday that Yongfei Ci was one of 14 graduate students who began the semester-long mathematics program at the Ivy League university on Sept. 9. Nickel said Ci is a PhD student at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champagne.

The (Champaign) News-Gazette reports 29-year-old Ci was arrested Friday, not long after he allegedly broke into the off-campus apartment of his estranged girlfriend, 25-year-old Mengchen Huang, and stabbed her to death. She was also a student at the University of Illinois.